Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

Our days lately have consisted of fans. Yes, plenty and plenty of fans. Plugging, unplugging, rearranging, positioning…fans. This always seems to happen during this time of the year. Our A/C unit is a sensitive little beast and when he feels overworked, he crashes…hard. Much to our luck, this always seems to happen during the dead of summer.

So, what do I decide to do when our A/C crashes? I run up to the grocery store and buy lots and lots of ingredients that I can prepare using my stovetop and oven. That makes complete sense, right? In a house that has consistently been around a cool 85 degrees, I decide to make it even hotter by turning on the only heat source in our house that runs during the summer. Seriously, what was I thinking?

The up side to all of this cooking madness is that I have tons of recipes that I cannot wait to share with you. Oh, and we have the A/C guy working on our little situation so hopefully there is an end in sight before I slowly begin to melt away.

I guess you could say that I was somewhat using my head when I began to make this soup recipe. Yes, soup…I know…in a house that is 85 degrees…I’m crazy. Instead of making this on the stovetop, I used a slow cooker and tucked it in the corner of my kitchen to allow it to cook all day. The further the heat is away from me, the better.

Once the timer went off on the slow cooker, I taste tested the soup, packaged it up in freezer containers, and placed the containers in the freezer for us to enjoy on a cooler day…perhaps when the A/C is working again…whenever that might be. For now, I’m thinking that tonight’s dinner is going to be a smoothie to keep me nice and cool…or maybe just a big bowl of ice cream.

12 Comments

What an absolutely beautiful photo of soup…really does make one want to dive in, heat or not1

I don't have air and am fortunate I live in Denver where the humidity is low. BUT…much of that ability to be comfortable depending on big trees in my yard. I just lost one 3 weeks ago so I've seen my inside temp rise about 8 degrees each day. Sad. So I use my grill more and more to keep from adding heat to the house. I would try making soup out there in a heartbeat but the crockpot is even better!

me too–confused about the spinach. Also would be nice to know how many servings and what size crock pot. But sounds wonderful. Wild rice is always hard for me to use as I never want to cook it that long.

I made a similar soup from the Weight Watchers site in a crockpot recently that was awful! The rice was a mushy mess and it was the consistency of grits. I am curious how your soup does not do this? Do you have this problem all the liquid being absorbed? I did some searching for comments and it sounded like others have had a similar experience so they added the rice near the end (already cooked) Mine cooked on high for 3 hours. Do you think it makes a difference cooking it on low? The recipe I used had a mix of wild rice and regular rice and I wonder if I had only used wild rice if it would have turned out the same.

We made the chicken and wild rice in the slow cooker cooked it on low, after only 5 hours the rice broke down and became mushy. It taste good but I don't know how to make the soup so that it stays whole. Any suggestions??

Loved this recipe! We added carrots to make it a bit more hearty. We had the same thing happen with the rice, it broke down a bit. I'm trying it again today and will add the carrots at the beginning and then add the rice towards the end. BTW, I had a really hard time finding this recipe today. It's not showing up on your recipe list. Thanks for sharing!

This looks so scrumptious- I'm making it this weekend! By the way, the chat about spinach above…got me to thinking, that you absolutely could tear up spinach and stir in just before serving. A nutritious and delicious addition.(Your food photography is exquisite!)